An Ode to Hotels
The artifice and ambiance of a quaint hotel is far better than a transactional Airbnb
The dreary damp chill of the Cote d’Azur — -three words one does not typically associate with those other three words — was threatening to burrow in on my mood like a chill to the bone. It was late January and we were in Antibes after a snowless ski run in a frighteningly severe chalet in Merano, Italy, where it would not have surprised me to be subjected to naked rolfing by a humorless Austrian nurse.
We’d fled the chalet for southern France. But alas, as we’d soon discover, the French in this sun-kissed coast treat winter as a vacation from the madness and close up tight. The few shops and restaurants that remain open for the locals close on Sunday and Monday. And sometimes for the heck of it Wednesday. That left us — R and me — wandering ghostly streets, damp with winter chill.
To jumpstart our sinking moods, we rented a car and drove the winding hills of Eze, retracing Cary Grant’s drunken drive in North by Northwest. In Cap-Ferrat we stopped for mussels alongside a marina, silent of the cheerful clanking sailboats of summer. In Beaulieu-sur-Mer, we toured a dank and empty palace built by a rich archeologist in high Greek style.
Just to boost my blue mood, I bought a small painting in the indigo and yellows of summer. We’d return in the early evening to our quiet Airbnb on a quiet residential street up a hill in Antibes with a blinking XXX-Rated book store below.
What my sinking mood needed was not someone else’s kitchen but a kitchenless, catered affair. A hotel!
I’ve loved hotels for my entire life. As a child, the thrill of pulling into the half-moon drive of Holiday Inn was unmatched. The drinking glasses with cellophane stretched tight as a drum over their tops, the whiff of chlorine in the halls, the ice machines. On business trips, my parents would leave me to fend for myself poolside at their favorite hotel in Minneapolis, where I perfected the art of ordering a cheeseburger, Eloise-like: “please charge it to the room.” The love affair has not dimmed.
There is a certain type of hotel I seek. No massive chains with atriums of fake greenery for me. No grand dames with words like Ritz or Plaza in their names. No, I seek out the old world pensione where regulars, oblivious to their declining fortunes, return season after season with their trunks and small dogs, where the staff is discrete but ever-present and the food is slightly underwhelming yet exquisite. Hotel Juana fit the bill.
We arrived as the sky broke blue. As our luggage was taken to our room, we chose a seat on the terrace and ordered club sandwiches and a bottle of white wine. The waiter and the bartender — the only two others in the room — joked in the relaxed pace of the off season.
We spent a week like this. In the mornings, we’d summon the 1890s elevator from the fourth floor with a piercing bell. Shutting the gates behind us, we’d descend with a shudder.
A cappuccino and a croissant with an English newspaper would start the day, followed by a walk along the water or through the winding hills of Juan-les-Pins. We’d pause to watch a rousing game of soccer-volleyball on the beach or sit on a bench and watch seagulls swarm. A late afternoon cortado in a small sitting room off the lobby cried out for writing postcards. A long hot bath and a glass of bubbly with a good book would take the chill off before a late dinner. We’d occasionally nod to the two other guests, but mostly we ambled about alone with the staff. The place was like a theater after the show was over when only the stage hands are left sweeping up, but it was perfect.
We’d had a similar reprieve in Venice during a year-long trek. The hotel there was designed to resemble a ship, decked out in warm teak and cubby holes of life aboard, so authentic it practically creaked. Like Venice itself, our days were grand and delusional. Late to rise from plush sheets and a shower in a massive green-marbled bathroom after months of dingy Airbnb bathrooms, we’d take breakfast with the other eccentric passengers on our ocean liner. This was no Eggo-in-the-toaster crowd — no cranky children, no bedhead, no athleisure wear. Instead, a dozen other couples would sip coffee and brush croissant crumbs from their shirts, the only sound the clink of silver on china. We’d pour coffee from one china pot and steamed milk from another while while reading then papers hanging from a bamboo rack.
Afterward, the two-person elevator would jerk and stammer us back up to our room where we’d slowly begin to prepare for the remainder of the day — a restaurant reservation yelled in bad Italian ninto a heavy phone receiver , a scouring of maps, a making of plans to later ditch. We’d wind through the gloomy and damp alleyways to a trattoria for a late lunch of swordfish with aubergine or calamari with just a hint of crust. A glass of soave, white tablecloths, photos on the wall, exuberant owners fitting us in despite the crowd, no tapping interminably on a screen, no sighing over lack of reservations, no pretend-wait.
Later, after a nap and a soak, we’d make our way to the hotel’s tiny, exquisitely lonely bar for a prosecco and potato chips.
The bartender, who was also the bell-man, would take our order and retreat through swinging doors a few steps away. He’d fuss and mutter before a silver tray would appear through a serving window. He’d set the tray on the bar, come through the swinging porthole doors and pick up the tray to deliver to us three steps away — potato chips in a silver goblet and two glasses of Prosecco. We’d sit alone sipping our drinks, like a British couple in the 1920s who lived in the hotel — “I dare say old chap, how about another drink?” Then we’d dodder off to dinner in our evening clothes.
It says something, I suppose, about how place matters. Back in Juan-les-Pins, the weather had not vastly improved. The stores were still closed. The streets were still deserted.
But the artifice and ambiance of this quaint hotel was far better than the transactional and functional Airbnb — the ghosts of owners lingering in the bar of soap or the rack of spices. It is, after all, what we seek when we travel, an escape from our daily lives. Airbnb may be practical and cheaper, but it is not elevating. It does not lend itself to reverie or daydreaming. It does not allow for that bubble of fiction that a certain type of hotel writes for us.
On our last day, as we sipped our cappuccinos and read the paper, I knew I would miss this place.
